The Fall of the House of Usher, an eight-episode series on Netflix, has absolutely nothing to do with the eponymous story by Edgar Allan Poe.

And it has everything to do with it.

On the surface, the series tells the story of a modern pharmaceutical empire, ruthlessly led by Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood, present day, and Zach Guilford in his younger years) and his sister, Madeline (Mary McDonnell, now, and Willa Fitzgerald, then). A debt long overdue comes to term and the Usher family -- starting with Roderick's children -- has to pay.

It's not much like the famous tale by Poe, and yet the tension and eventual terror it builds feels very familiar. And that's not all -- the writers (led by series creator Mike Flanagan) have woven many characters and plot threads from Poe's various short stories and poems into the fabric of this series.

Let's start with the Usher children, all of whom are adults, two of whom are legitimate. There's Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota), Camille (Kate Siegel), Napoleon (Rahul Kohli), Victorine (T'Nia Miller), Tamerlane (Samatha Sloyan) and Frederick (Henry Thomas). All of them are guilty of varying levels of fraud, decadence and cruelty, and all six will pay a price before their father's and aunt's debt comes to term. Their fate is no spoiler; the series begins with a group funeral, after which Roderick invites U.S. District Attorney Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly now, Malcolm Goodwin in the past), who has been striving for decades to expose the corruption of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, which is synonymous with the Usher family.

If those names sound familiar, good -- your 9th-grade English teacher would be proud. Other characters in the series include Annabel Lee, Lenore and even the lawyer Arthur Gordon Pym (masterfully brought to life by a gravelly Mark Hamill), while some are named for people in Poe's life, rather than his stories.

The series also draws major plot points from Poe stories including "Masque of the Red Death," "Murder in the Rue Morgue," "The Black Cat," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Gold-Bug," "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Cask of Amontillado," as well as poems such as "Tamerlane," "Annabel Lee" and, of course, "The Raven."

Carla Gugino, as the mysterious, ubiquitous Verna (an obvious anagram of "Raven"), links all of their stories and fates together. Somewhere along the way, her role in the events will become plainly, grotesquely clear.

This is a masterfully crafted series, with sterling performances from the cast all around. Tense, truly horrifying at times, The Fall of the House of Usher is an excellent storytelling. When it ends, it feels too soon ... but it is exactly the right length.

Madeline's closing diatribe against the sins and desires of humanity in the final episode is harsh, but truer than we'd like to admit. Is it fair that her family pays such a price for filling a need that so many people demand? Well, yeah, probably.